Circuit Boards + Soldering Iron == Terrorist?

Search and Seizure asks: "This week, the local police contacted one of my co-workers and informed him that they had been contacted by the FBI who requested that they investigate his apartment. According to the police, while his apartment repair staff were checking his smoke alarm, they had noticed suspicious looking items in his kitchen and had called the FBI because they suspected that he might be a terrorist. What do you do when your landlord suspects that you might be a terrorist and reports you to the FBI?" If the law comes a-knocking, always remember that you can politely ask for a warrant. "The police officer went on to explain that my co-worker had two choices:

1) Let the local police take a look and explain what the 'suspicious' items were for.
2) Don't let the local police in. The police will let the FBI know, and they will use 'Homeland Security' to come in and do a full search.

He opted for the less drastic choice, and showed the officer the digital camera guts, his in-progress circuitry to take automatic pictures, the tethered balloon that he was going to hook them up to so he could take overhead pictures, and the beer keg that he used to store his beer.

The police officer accepted his explanations and it appears to have turned out okay, but the whole situation is a little disturbing.

What rights do we have to experiment and create in this age of paranoia?"

Comments

This is the problem

[Apreche]

People have no balls. We all know this homeland security BS is totally unconstitutional, its not even a question. Here's what I would have done in the guys situation.

1) I would have taken advantage of my rights to the fullest extent forcing them to use the patriot act.

2) Gone to court eventually and claimed that the patriot act was unconstitutional.

3) Next year or the year after I would be in the supreme court with my lawyer, it would be US vs. Me and the patriot act would be declared unconstitutional making the world a better place for everybody.

Sure it would be a pain in the ass. Sure it would be a lot more work than that. And sure it would probably "ruin" my life. But this stuff wont go away on its own. Somebody has to fight it. I'm just waiting for my chance. The rest of the people around are all wusses who wont sacrifice anything for the common good. I can't wait until the day big brother comes to get me. I want to have a digital camera take a picture of the looks on their faces when I give them the double deuce.

Re:This is the problem

[rigau]

The USA PATRIOT Act is not unconstitutional. Maybe sections of it are but the whole thing is not. If you were to go to court on an issue revolving around the act more likely than not the courts would rule only on the section that deal with your particular problem not on the whole act. Courts tend to keep their decisions limited in scope and will only rule on the particular facts of the case at hand unlike a legislative body that passes laws that have a much more broad application.

This is of course a generalization. Sometimes courts will decide on more general issues but it is ussualy done when the legislatures have avoided -most of the time on purpose- dealing with the issue themselves.

Re:Rights?

[amarodeeps]

Privacy rights however are obviously something completely different, and 'in this age of paranoia', your right to privacy is one of the first victims.

Yes, exactly. And now the government has a record of some of the interesting activity he's been engaging in. Perhaps he's gone in a file somewhere, a separate memo has been sent to some higher up State or Federal organization, he's being catalogued in a database...

I think the thing that really scares the shit out of me is the implicit threat and removal of rights that the police officer put forth. Previously, from what I understand, someone could demand that they see a warrant, a judge would have had to specifically grant that warrant, and some rights were preserved. There were some checks and balances in place. Now, all of a sudden, the executive branch can just say "hey, we need to see your stuff, and if you don't let us do it, we'll get someone else to do it. Sucks to be you." Police state, you're looking more and more similar to what we have...

Hysteria

[hey!]

A coworker was on a plane recently where a aged, somewhat dark skinned Italian man pulled out a rosary and began praying. The young woman across the aisle was obviously distrubed, called the stewardess and had a whispered conversation. The stewardess started coming by and taling to the man asking questions like was he nervous about flying. On the next leg of the flight the flight crew got a burly, surly "steward", who was obviously an air marshal.

In the end, this incident just wasted some public servant's time. Same as the circuit board incident. Unless or until people get good at recognizing what a bomb detonator really looks like, things like this are bound to happen. I'd say a friendly show and tell with a local cop isn't so bad in the scheme of thigns. What I don't know is how muslims manage to live in this country given the climate of hysteria, having to pray five times a day. Imagine coming under suspicion of preparing yourself for a suicide bombing several times every day.

Re:Hysteria

[mcrbids]

In the end, this incident just wasted some public servant's time. Same as the circuit board incident. Unless or until people get good at recognizing what a bomb detonator really looks like, things like this are bound to happen.

Since you are obviously expert in all things bomb-detonator, what does an "average" bomb detonator look like?

Oh... wait! I remember - I saw it in a movie! A "Bomb detonator" is that black box, about 9 inches long, 4 inches wide, and about 2 inches tall, with the big, red lettering on the top that says "Bomb Detonator" on the top of it, and has a few red and white snap wiring terminals on the side, right?

No?

Are you sure?

We live in a modern-day paranoia. We've been abusing the people of the Middle East selfishly for decades in order to satiate our wasteful addiction to crude oil, and now we pay the price of bad karma.

What really sucks is that there are real solutions to our energy needs. Linked is but one example with a total initial cost of about $169 billion, about as much as the $162 billion the most recent Iraq war cost to wage that would almost completely eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and dramatically reduce the Carbon Dioxide production of the United States.

I just hope and pray that someday, we find a leader that will actually lead us towards a better world, because we sure as hell don't have one today.

Re:Hysteria

[AnwerB]

> What I don't know is how muslims manage to live in this country given the climate of hysteria

Well, what I did when the FBI called me and asked me to come in for questioning is call a lawyer.

They called me in the middle of the day at my office, knew everything about me and started asking questions about my brother, family, etc.

They then told me that I could come into their office for questioning... or if more convenient, they would come to my office and question me there.

After asking them what they wanted, they finally told me that with the upcoming war in Iraq (this was about a year ago), they wanted to know if I had any knowledge about weapons of mass destruction (really, I'm not joking). I told them that I was 3 at the time I had left, but they wanted me to come in anyway.

Apparantly, they were just on a fishing trip. So I got a lawyer to find out what this all meant. She called and they immediately said there was no need for me to come in anymore, and they didn't have any specific questions but they would contact me if they could think of any.

Anyway, I've been in the US a while and know my rights as a citizen, but I know it would have terrified some others to be taken in for questioning - they have this way to make you feel that something ominous is about to happen.

P.S. I'm a computer geek, and don't show any terrorist tendencies :) - just in case someone suggests that they had reason to be suspicious.

Re:Hysteria

[Halfbaked Plan]

Aw, comeon. Everybody knows that a bomb detonator is a 555 chip with a really big timing capacitor.

I suppose the cheapos would just use some junk opamp or comparator instead of the 555, but they don't really count!

Re:Well

[fmaxwell]

If "your friend" hasn't done anything, "he" shouldn't have anything to worry about.

You aren't doing anything illegal when you go into the bathroom to take a dump, so you have nothing to "worry about" if the FBI wants to send agents in to watch you. You aren't doing anything illegal when you dress up like Tinkerbell and prance around your house, so you shouldn't mind Homeland Security agents watching you doing it. If you aren't doing anything illegal, you should not mind the government sending agents over to read your e-mail, rifle through your personal belongings, listen to your phone conversations, and tail you when you drive somewhere.

I recognize the humorous aspect of your post, but that first sentence really summed up a scary, but all-too-commonly-voiced, sentiment about this subject.

Re:This is odd

[SagSaw]

It probably goes something like this.

1. Maintainance worker sees circuit boards, gas baloons, etc. in circuit-board-guy's apartment.

2. Thinking he's a hero and is about to foil a major terrorist plot, worker over-reacts and calls the FBI. (Note that the appropriate action if the worker suspects illegal activity would most likely be to call the local police.)

3. FBI takes worker's report, along with many other reports of people possing items that might be used in an attack, but are probably harmless. They don't want to pull resources off of other, probably more important tasts, in order to check out circuit-board-guy. Instead, they relay the report to the local police (who should have been contacted instead of the FBI in the first place), just in case circuit-board-guy really is planning some kind of attack.

4. Local police also assume that circuit-board-guy is harmless, but want to go take a peak just to be sure.

5. Local police show up at circuit-board-guy's door. They tell him what's going on (why not, he's probably innocent). Circuit-board-guy explains his hobby, and everybody goes away happy.

They way I read it, the FBI and the local police handled it well. Nobody had their door kicked down or property searched/seized involuntarily. The only place where something went wrong was worker's decision to call the FBI over a circuit board.

There are a number of comments to the effect that circuit-board-guy should have told the police to f*** off unless they had a warrant. While that would have been circuit-board-guy's right, I don't think it would have helped anything. By letting the police in and explaining his activities, circuit-board-guy did two good things. First, he defused suspicion (hopefully) that he might be planning some kind of attack. Second, showed the police that there are valid reasons for innocent people to have circuit boards and soldering irons hangin around their homes.

Flow on effect

[Stillman]

Now, I don't want to come off as anti-american (though it is fairly easy to feel that way these days), but do you US citizens realise that this sort of stuff is starting to flow on to the rest of the world? Many of us live in countries not governed by religious, paranoid, low-iq, war-fetishists. We like that we don't need to go around pretending there are terrorists everywhere in order to "exact vengeance" for ONE incident (which, lets face it, PALES next to some of the things that the US have done to other countries) 3 years ago.

Because the US is so influential on the western political stage though, we almost have to fall in line with your head lunatic. PLEASE get rid of this fucker. PLEASE vote for someone with some intelligence. And also, if you know your neighbours or friends are morons who will vote for any asshole who can wave a flag and spout some jingoistic bollocks, please have them killed. Cheers.